Graduate School Competition Visually Highlights Research and Creative Activities

May 10, 2016, 8:45 AM

The Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Graduate School’s inaugural Visualizing Research Impacts (VRI) competition, held during the spring semester, offered SIUE scholars an opportunity to share the results and impact of their research and creative activities through imagery.

Seventeen entries were received from faculty and students that depicted a wonderfully rich diversity of creative activities across the institution from the sciences, engineering, arts, humanities and education.

“The VRI competition was created as a unique visual way of promoting the innovative research and creative activities at SIUE to a wider audience in a way that captures their imaginations,” said Jerry Weinberg, associate provost for research and dean of the Graduate School. “The quality and creativity of the images resulted in passionate deliberation by the panel of alumni and emeritus faculty judges.”

Kodi Thompson, a master of fine arts student in the ceramics program, earned the Most Creative Representation of Research Impact award, with a $1,500 monetary prize to fund continued research or creative activity. Thompson experimented with such materials as concrete, resin, steel mesh and glass to produce a 4x3-foot piece depicting a density map of graffiti in New York City.

“The gridded steel mesh is layered together to represent higher amounts of graffiti in that location,” Thompson wrote in his VRI submission statement. “The higher density areas are also more rusted as they get thicker, playing with the idea of time and history.”

Rachel Rodgers, a graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences, earned the Best Representation of Research Impact award, valued at $1,500. Rodgers’ winning imagery is representative of her research on the evolutionary relationships among all forms of life that can be inferred directly from DNA.

“As the oldest and most diverse group of vertebrates, fishes are of particular interest in understanding traits important to the success of the vertebrate lineage, which includes humans,” Rodgers’ submission statement detailed. “Salinity tolerance is among the most critical traits possessed by fishes, determining which habitats they may occupy. Understanding salinity tolerance is important for understanding emerging issues such as pollution tolerance.”

The images submitted in the competition will be highlighted in the Graduate School’s annual Research and Creative Activities publication.

Photos: Kodi Thompson’s winning submission visually depicts his research on graffiti density in New York City.

Rachel Rodgers’ imagery represents her study on the phylogeny problem through a genome-scale approach.